Richest man Jeff Bezos to divorce: source

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos live in 'common property' state

Zuma Press/TNS
It was announced Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, will divorce after 25 years.

Washington Post

Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, are getting a divorce.

Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has an estimated net worth of $137 billion and topped Forbes’ list last year of the richest Americans — beating out Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg — as well as the list of billionaires worldwide.

Washington, D.C., divorce lawyer Sandy Ain, who has handled his share of splits among the uber-wealthy (although he doesn’t rep either Bezos), noted that Washington state, where the Bezoses reside, is a “common property” state — meaning that all assets and debts accumulated during a marriage are divided equally.

Because Bezos is the richest person in the world, a 50-50 agreement would result in the biggest recorded divorce settlement.

But, Ain said, the couple could have a prenuptial agreement — or even a postnuptial agreement negotiated after the marriage — that would trump the law declaring a couple halve everything. And what could be in such an arrangement? “Literally anything they wanted,” Ain said, including a potential provision that property acquired under one party’s name remain theirs.

The couple wed in 1993, a year after meeting at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and Co., where MacKenzie (nee Tuttle) was a research associate.

Washington Post

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